Telegram raises over $850 million in its token pre-sale

Telegram, the popular messaging app, said in a recent statement that their ICO token pre-sale raised over $850 million, making it the biggest funded ICO in the history of cryptocurrency. By comparison, Tezos raised $230 million in 2016, followed by Filecoin which raised around $200 million.

Telegram announced their ICO in January when they revealed the plan to raise around $1.2 billion from their token sale also known as “grams”. While this seems like a very successful funding, the project isn’t without its critics. Some claim that this is an centralization attempt by the company, which gives the voting power to the entity that holds most tokens which in this case, is the TON Foundation that holds the vast majority of the tokens, as seen in their whitepaper.

It’s important to note that Telegram suffered from high operating costs as reported by various media outlets, making this ICO a huge success for the company. It remains to be seen if the token will keep its price once it hits the exchanges but some analysts fear that this massive sale will lead to an inevitable dump on the exchanges.

As always, if you decide on investing in TON, take a skeptical approach and consider all the angles, as you must with all ICOs, no matter their popularity.